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40 North Se La Road, Lhasa, Tibet, 850000, China
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The stairs
The postcard view of Potala
carpets on show in Tanva's showroom near Lhasa
View on the way to Tibet from Chengdu
I am interested in spending two days in Lhasa (day 1 &4) and then make a trip to Namtso Lake,departing for Chengdu on day 5.
Can anyone recommend a travel agent with Tibetan guide? I read that it is necessary to book a package tour in order to get into Tibet.
Yes you need to book a package tour in order to get the Tibet Permit. Lhasa+Namtso Lake tour package 4 days will be enough. If you joining the local tour, it cost about Cny2000, fullboard packages. And please take note 1-8 Oct is public holiday in China, better avoid travelling that period of time.
Lhasa has two different parts of the city. Most of the must see things like the Barkhor and the Jokhang are in the Tibetan part of town. The Tibetan part is the eastern part and can be recognised by its colorful houses.
The chinese (western) part has the more expensive hotels.
This is the summer residence of Dalay Lama. It is not as interesting as Potala, but worth of visiting. When Dalay Lama lived here, he liked to feed fish in this pond. He took the piece of bread and went to the pond. when he moved, the fish heard the steps of Dalay Lama and followed him around the pond.
In different regions of Tibet, Shannan or Changtang, rural or pastoral areas, eastern or western Tibet, the customs are varied. As a Tibetan saying goes: "Different lamas teach in different ways; different inhabitants have different sayings and different nature cultivates different folkways". The nomadic herders living on the highly-elevated, frigid and sleeted grasslands in northern Tibet wear hides and furs, eat beef, mutton and milk products, and live in yak woollen tents. The farmers living along the Yarlung Zangbo River Valley and the mountain dwellers in the Himalayas wear wool tweed clothing, eat tsampa (roasted highland barley flour), and reside in stone or earthern houses, while the the inhabitants in forested regions dwell in bamboo and wooden houses.
Most of the places we went to were all earthen or stone houses, many of them so much more beautiful than half the buildings they have in Beijing thats for sure! And the ones in the countryside had yak or horse (couldnt tell the difference!) p** on the walls. I'm not sure what that was for? Extra warmth? Make the walls more solid? But fun to see all the same!
So the folk culture in the pastoral areas of northern Tibet is known as the 'yak culture', while the rural areas are known as the 'highland barley culture'.
Excerpt from The Soul of Tibet - http://www.theosophy.org/tlodocs/SoulofTibet.htm :
"The Tibetan view of religion is indeed something totally different from our ordinary response to religious as opposed to secular thought. How many of us really believe that even more important than material advancement and the utilitarian criterion of physical pleasure, is the possession of priceless truths concerning the numerous inhibitions and tendencies which afflict the human psyche and of which we have hardly any definite and exact knowledge? If we do believe this, we will be prepared to approach in a spirit of humility the thousands of Buddhist texts in Tibet that came from India, Nepal and China. Tibet is a repository of the real wisdom of the East – a much abused phrase. It has been the home of thousands upon thousands of manuscripts, scrolls, and volumes in which we have not only profound spiritual truths but also examples of a highly developed system of logic and dialectics that was primarily put to a metaphysical and a religious use but which in itself provides a unique discipline to the mind. Tibet has no parallel in this sphere. Of course, no one would admit that he does not care for logical processes. But how much thought do we give simply to perfecting the art of enquiry and disputation? How much time do we give to evolving a technique of constructive discussion? Do we really know how it is possible to resolve the apparently contrary standpoints of relative truths in religion and philosophy and our human relationships?
This technique was highly developed in Tibet. It was founded upon the doctrine of what the Dalai Lama calls the Dual Truth: the distinction between a Platonic archetype of absolute truth, which is unknown to mortal man but can always be held up as an ultimate ideal, and the relative truth every human being embodies, acquired purely by reference to his own experience.
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In the hillsides around the Drepung complex, a few nuns eke out an existence in ruins of the dormitories and caves. The spend most of their time meditating – they are pilgrims who never left. We were lucky enough to be invited inside to have a look at one of the caves, it was laid out more like a temple than a home, with very few home comforts. Water is boiled using the traditional solar heating method – at this altitude, water boils at 80C.
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